‘What took you so long, bog-breath?’
I came upon this tree which had uprooted to make a bridge across the river. I picked up a big branch, nearly as long as I was tall, and gripped it between my two fists, swinging it from side to side, preparing to challenge any stranger who might wish to pass over the water. But it was too heavy and, after nearly toppling into the bubbling stream a couple of times, I leant it against a nearby tree (it was too good a stick to just throw away) and practised my kung-fu. I knew that if I was attacked I could defend myself by using the strength of my opponent as a weapon. I wasn’t quite sure how that would work but the man on the television looked quite weedy too so it was possible at least. I stood guard for five whole minutes but, when no one did try to cross the bridge, I got bored, collected my hefty stick and went on my way.
And then I stopped.
I was delighted—and quite surprised—to find that I had come right to the very gates of King John’s castle nestled among the trees. I was so surprised to find it there that I couldn’t help glancing around to see if there was something else nearby to explain its sudden appearance. It was made of concrete, about the size of Kat’s Mini Minor with six or eight sides like one of those shapes in Mr Gale’s maths box. Two oblong holes stared back at me making it look a bit like King Richard’s helmet. And, from inside, I could hear this voice. It sounded like someone reading the news on the radio:
Hyde Park, summer, 1942.
Couples supine, leave their curves on the grass,
‘What super-power would you have?’ she asks. ‘To see through walls?
To fly?’
‘The power to learn by my mistakes,’ I reply.
I crept around the castle walls, each step as dusty as the dry earth, and on the far side discovered steps leading down to a narrow gap through which I could enter.
If I chose to.
Above the entrance was a handwritten cardboard sign, saying: DANGER—DO NOT ENTER! Usually that would’ve been enough. Usually I could just have turned around, still curious maybe but otherwise happy. In the last few days, though, I’d already discovered too many mysterious places and thought too much about the secrets they hid. If I just walk away now, I thought, I’ll explode.
We join the queue: Will Hay. The Goose Steps Out.
Her fingers soft on mine: ‘Keep yourself safe,’ she says. ‘Promise?’
‘There’s only two kinds of soldier,’ I say, lest she forget.
‘Those who have died and those who haven’t died yet.’
As the poem continued—it was definitely a poem because it rhymed at the end—I took down the Danger notice and folded it into my pocket. (I thought it would look good on the front of my scrapbook). I went down step by step and slid through the opening. All the brightness of the day had been squeezed out of the light that dripped into the musty cave through its slender eye-holes. Still dazzled by the afternoon it took a moment to make the most of the gloom. Perched on the concrete shelf that ran around the inside of the block was a pale, middle-aged man, vaguely familiar, his hair fading to grey. Beside him were a Thermos flask and, on a folded red napkin, a half-eaten pork pie. In his right hand a pen and on his lap a pad of paper covered with writing. The dim light tip-toed across the page. His eyes were closed as he spoke aloud, his fingers tracing the words like a blind man:
‘A May wedding,’ she dreams, ‘with bridesmaids in silk, ‘Rose petals scattered, the bells unruly.
‘A honeymoon in Brighton: on the esplanade, hand in hand.
‘You should come,’ she says. ‘To the wedding, I mean. You’d like him.’
Suddenly the man’s voice coughed and spluttered like an engine and his body went all stiff. A silent heartbeat followed before his eyes snapped open to discover me standing in the shadows.
‘Goodness me!’ he cried, his hand shooting to his chest. ‘Well, who the …?’ At first I thought he might faint but, as his fingers and the palm of his hand massaged his heart, he drew several deep, shuddery breaths and sighed. He peered at me through the windows of his glasses. ‘I was doing it again, wasn’t I?’ he said. ‘Out loud?’
I nodded.
‘Oh, oh, oh,’ cried the man, placing pen and paper on the shelf beside him, ‘what on earth must you think of me. “Unhand me, grey-beard loon!” you cry. Loony old man? Sat in pillbox? Reciting poetry?’ He cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Yes, yes, that’s them: the men in the white coats are on their way. “Old man? Pillbox, you say? Poetry?” they cry. “Lock him away, lock him away.” What’s that? A dungeon? “Oh, yes, but only the deepest, darkest dungeon you’ve got. And once you’ve locked that door,” ’ he instructed, ‘ “good and tight,” ’ jabbing his finger at the air, ‘ “take that key and send it all the way to Timbuktoo. Oh, yes, that’s the only …” ’ He glanced at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘Am I scaring you?’ And then he tried to smile, I think, although his face didn’t seem to have had much practice.
I shook my head.
‘You can relax,’ he said. ‘I’m really not mad. At least, I don’t believe myself so. The jury is divided, of course. And I, perhaps, am not the soundest judge of the matter.’ He reached for his flask, fingers trembling, and unscrewed the cap, looking me up and down as he did so. ‘My goodness, Norman,’ he said, looking at me but like he was talking to someone else, ‘we’ve got a quiet one here.’ He followed my puzzled eyes as they roamed the inside of his hiding place. ‘It’s a pillbox,’ he said. ‘They built them during the war to repel the Germans.’ He made a gun shape with his fingers and fired two imaginary shots. ‘And what about you? Red Indian?’
Red Indian? What did that mean?
‘Well, then I’m confused,’ he said frowning, and he tapped the side of his head reminding me of the school tie knotted about my own.
Oh. ‘Robin Hood.’
‘Robin Hood?’ He slapped his forehead. ‘Robin Hood. Of course.’ And then he laughed, a powdery, throaty sound. ‘Indeed, what would the proud warriors of the Apache nation be doing with ties wrapped around their heads? What a thought! Robin Hood and his Merry Men, however, rarely wore anything else.’
Chuckling, the man poured liquid from his flask into a cup. It was thick and brown.
‘Oh,’ I said as a penny dropped. Not a new penny but one of those big old clunky ones. ‘You’re the Scarecrow Man.’
He looked startled for a moment and then laughed again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hello. I’ve heard that appellation before. It makes a kind of sense, I suppose: “a tattered coat upon a stick.” It’s a fair description. I couldn’t quibble.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but, ‘Out in the fields,’ I went. ‘That’s what they call you: Anna-Marie and my … and Kat. I’ve seen you in the fields.’
‘Well …’
‘You’re always looking for something.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Very observant. Tres, tres observant, young man. Looks like the lad’s got you bang to rights, Norman. It’s always the quiet ones.’ And he slapped his forehead again as he told himself off: ‘You’ve got to watch out for the quiet ones.’ He adjusted his glasses with his forefinger and peered at me. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that an explanation is called for, a mea culpa in fact. Well, Senor Torquemada, you see, I am a writer. Well, a poet. Of sorts. There you squeezed it out of me. Like a, you know, a tube of toothpaste. Although,’ he muttered nodding at the creased cardboard poking from my pocket, ‘I can only pray that my poetry is more convincing than my sign writing.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why do you write? I mean what are you looking for?’ I meant when he was out in the fields.
‘Aha,’ he said, removing his glasses. ‘Do you know those almost sound like two different questions?’ And he jammed his thumb and forefinger together over eyes squeezed tight, all the way to the bridge of his nose. He tugged the tail of his shirt free of his belt and used it to wipe the lenses of his glasses. As he did so, he mumbled: ‘Sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure I’m not dreaming
.’ And then more clearly, ‘I’m not looking for any more than anyone else. Just answers, I think. Explanations, maybe. Justifications,’ as if he were sorting through a box. He squinted at his glasses before replacing them on his nose. ‘Words perhaps; perhaps inspiration.’
‘Kat says, “Never answer,” ’ I said.
‘Well, then,’ he said, peering at me, ‘I’m afraid we might not get on.’ His thin fingers sifted through his peppercorn hair. ‘Who’s Kat anyway?’
‘She doesn’t want people knowing our business,’ I said quickly, and then I blushed.
The man coughed with laughter. ‘Well, that,’ he said, ‘is an attitude that I could much more readily get behind. What’s your name?’
When I told him, he said, ‘Well, it’s good to meet you, Peter. I’m Norman—Norman Kirrin—and what I’m looking for—’
‘Like the shop,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes,’ he snapped, ‘just like the shop but, to return to your question, what I’m looking for is forgiveness. You know what that’s like, don’t you? Everybody makes choices; everybody make mistakes. Sometimes we act when we should have done nothing; sometimes we do nothing when we should have … Well, you get the picture. And it doesn’t matter whether they, our mistakes, are big or small, or whether they are well-intentioned or naïve or driven by malice. The most innocuous mistake can have the gravest repercussions. I made a mistake once, thirty-odd years ago, tiny one. I’ve been searching for forgiveness pretty much ever since.’
‘Who from?’
‘Who from?’ he laughed. ‘Norman, who from? From me, of course. Me, myself and I. I have always found that the hardest thing to do is to forgive oneself. Quite rightly so, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘What mistake?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let me go so far as to say that it was tiny,’ and he squeezed his thumb and forefinger together to show just how tiny his mistake had been. ‘So tiny. I failed to find the correct combination of words. That’s all. And, as a result, Peter, lives were ruined. My own, yes, but … also others’. Anyway, that’s what I’m searching for in the fields. That’s what I search for from the moment I get up until the moment I fall asleep at my desk: the correct combination of words.
‘You see, Peter—can I call you Peter?—I should have acted. I should have made a gesture. I should have offered an alternative, an option, for alternatives were available. With that gesture I could have changed the world or, at least, my little corner of it. Have you never had a day like that?’ And then he shook his head. ‘Of course not. Why would you? How old are you anyway? Eight?’
Ten. I was ten.
‘Ten? And you’re asking me why I write? “Why does the old man write?” you ask. “The old man in the pillbox: why does he write?” And it’s a good question, I suspect, but “Why does he choose to write?” That should be your question: Why do I choose to write?’
He sipped from the rim of the Thermos cap, his lips all puckery, and then a bite from his pork pie. ‘Do you choose to write, Norman?’ he wondered, brushing pastry crumbs from his red sweater. ‘I mean, any more than you choose to respire? Of course, of course. Of course, it’s a choice. Don’t be so precious. I am not helpless, Peter. It’s not an addiction. It is within my power to resist—not everything is—but I choose not to. I choose the infernal cry of the alarm clock; I choose to rise before the sun and drag my shuffling corpse to a desk; I choose to face the acres of Antarctic white and to leave my mark as I trudge across them like Robert Falcon Scott.’
And then he gasped, his eyes wide. ‘Oh, Norman, Norman,’ he cried, ‘putting on quite a show for the lad, aren’t you?’ He made fists and thumped them on his legs. ‘God indeed. You’re boring yourself. Robert Falcon Scott? If only that were true.’
He sat in silence for a moment although his lips kept moving. Then he looked up, again seeming startled by my presence. ‘Oh, Peter,’ he groaned, ‘Peter who is also beginning to take on the appearance of a frozen wasteland, you must forgive me. I don’t usually get to speak at such length, at least not with such a passive audience. You must forgive me the odd ramble. I must admit that the experience is making me quite lightheaded.’ He smacked his lips together.
‘So, you want to know why I write, do you?’ His voice was soft and then suddenly loud, angry: ‘The nerve of it. Why, you may as well ask why Romeo declares his love or Lear his madness or Hamlet his dilemma. You may as well ask a drowning man why he screams for help. Of course, he has a choice not to. He has a choice as to whether he keeps mum and lets the tide wash over him in steady waves or whether life is too precious, too brief to be sacrificed so readily just for fear of alarming the sunbathers on the beach.
‘What’s the alternative, Peter? Now that would be my question: what would I do if I couldn’t write?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it. What kind of existence would that be? Could I be content? Or would I be forced to wander the streets accosting strangers and yelling in their ears until they bleed? Or perhaps I would simply stand in the fields screaming till my lungs split: you know, scaring the crows.’
He finished his pork pie and drained the last of his tea. His hand struggled to rescrew the cap to his flask. There was sweat on his forehead.
‘I … It’s my teatime,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Teatime, yes, you’re quite right. I too must … Listen, Peter,’ he said, polishing the thighs of his trousers with the palms of his hand, ‘before you go, I would be most grateful if you wouldn’t tell anyone about,’ he indicated the cramped insides of the pillbox, ‘my little hideaway.’
‘Like a secret?’
‘Well, no. Not a secret exactly. That would make me sound far too glamorous. James Bond does secrets; I do … privacy. I do—’
‘But how do you find secrets out?’
‘Ouch!’ he cried, and covered his ears but he was laughing. ‘So, you do have some passion lurking behind that docile exterior. Glad to hear it. Well, my first recommendation, Peter, would be that you put that branch down before someone gets hurt.’
I lowered the branch, pointing its jagged end to the floor.
‘Good. And my second piece of advice is subterfuge; subterfuge in nearly all circumstances.’
‘Subter …?’
‘Be sneaky, my friend.’ With the cup of his hand the man, Norman, began scooping up the crumbs of his meal into a neat pyramid before folding them into the red napkin. ‘But also,’ he continued, ‘upon reflection, be careful. Secrets are usually secrets for a reason. For instance, what is it you wish to find out?’
When I didn’t answer he glanced up at me. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘A secret shared is a secret diluted, of course, and why would you share such a thing with the oddball in the pillbox when he has merely bared his soul? Well, Peter, if I were you, which, of course, I am not, I would proceed with caution. If you’re lucky this secret of yours, once revealed, will simply crumble and drift away into nothingness. If you are unlucky, however …’
11
One Sunday, I was at the kitchen table gobbling cornflakes, listening to Stewpot on Junior Choice, when, ‘You’ll give yourself indigestion.’ It was Anna-Marie stepping in at the back door. She wore a dark green dress to just above her knees with white lace trimmings and a pattern of little white flowers, drawn tight to her waist. Her hair was tied with a green elastic band into a long ponytail. On her feet she wore white socks and shiny, white sandals.
Oh. And Tommie was there too, hovering in the doorway. He was wearing a T-shirt.
Kat, at the sink arranging pink roses in a red painted jar, turned round and smiled. Anna-Marie tilted her head and watched as Kat stepped towards her, extending her hand and saying, ‘Hello. It’s the famous Anna-Marie. Nice to see you again.’ Anna-Marie’s clear blue eyes stared at Kat’s hand. ‘We’ve met before, of course, but …’ Stewpot began to play Morning-town Ride. ‘I’m Peter’s Aunt.’
Anna-Marie turned off the radio with a pop. ‘I know who you are,’ she said, and Kat
flashed me this funny look. ‘This is Tommie,’ went on Anna-Marie. ‘Say “hello”, Tommie.’
‘Hello.’
‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your window, Mrs …?’
‘Kat. You must call me Kat.’
‘With a “K”,’ I said.
‘… Kat, but I didn’t know anybody lived here.’
‘Oh well, not to worry. We keep ourselves to ourselves.’
‘So Peter tells me,’ said Anna-Marie. She picked up a piece of toast from the breakfast table, tore off a corner with her thin fingers and popped it in to her mouth. ‘After all, everybody needs secrets, don’t they?’
Kat’s eyes met Anna-Marie’s. ‘Pretty much everybody,’ she said.
Anna-Marie laughed. ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry, Kat,’ she said. ‘When I know a secret, I take it to the grave, don’t I, Tommie?’
Tommie, pulling at the frayed edge of his T-shirt sleeve, shrugged.
‘Okay,’ said Kat. ‘Thank you, Anna-Marie. But—’
‘You can relax, Kat. Grown-ups pretty much believe what they want,’ she chewed, ‘and that’s pretty much what you tell them.’ She swallowed. ‘Anything else is just too much hard work.’
‘Well, thank you then,’ said Kat.
‘You know, Kat,’ said Anna-Marie, ‘I think Peter’s very lucky to have an aunt like you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.’
‘I believe you. Thank you.’
‘What lovely flowers,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘I prefer yellow myself.’
Kat sighed and smiled. ‘Me too,’ she said.
I finished my cornflakes with a slurp.
‘Speak of the Devil,’ said Anna-Marie. ‘Honestly, Kat, how do you put up with this chatterbox all day long?’ And then everybody laughed at me. So then I knew that everything was all right.
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